Cia

How's 2020 treating you so far? Hopefully a little better than the ups and downs faced by the characters in the story featured in this month's CSR blog... Elixir by Comicality. We all know teens have strong emotions, but this strong...? Elixir by @Comicality Length: 7,221 Description: Young Danny has suddenly found himself having strange and powerful feelings for another boy for the very first time. He's never experienced any homoerotic feelings before...but one day, out of the blue...it was like he couldn't live without him. Almost as if a 'spell' had been cast upon him. So the real question is...why is he feeling this way? What does he plan to do about it? And... ...Just how deep do those feelings go? A Reader said: very exhilarating to start off, kept you reading more ~ Tsukihana Don't forget to come back and share your thoughts about the story on Monday, March 30th!

It's not censored. Anyone who chooses to participate can still do so. In fact, you can now do so with more free rein in The Pit. The whole concept of the test is to identify gender inequality in fiction, per the link. Again, that is a concept that goes straight to a political concept based on the definition of politics. When talking about creating realistic fiction, why focus just on gender? Just on sexuality? Why narrow in on such trigger concepts instead of focusing widely on creating realistic characters and interactions that represent real life: adults, children, men, women, primary, secondary, and incidental characters with interactions that fit within the story's framework? It's because there's a social concept--a political concept--being pushed about gender equality in fiction that is being shared instead of just expanding fictional worlds being fully developed. And that makes it political. Thus, post it in The Pit. I'm not arguing the point, the decision has been made.

There are lots of ways to be creative and expand your knowledge base. There are even other ways to share information about expanding characterization in stories. Rather than just passing along a test and stating that it measures this or that, try it on your own work and then reflect on how it might change your writing practices. Think more in generalities. Just pushing for one or two aspects of writing to be added can be seen as pushing a viewpoint of what is or isn't progressive/politically correct/etc... To contrast that, take a look at this past Article on exposition that includes information on how craft characters in a story in ways that make sense for the plot, for example, that has nothing to do with gender or sexuality or any arbitrary number of 'this or that':

I stated how and when a story using "political themes" would potentially be reviewed, such as when it is being used in direct response to a political debate with another member and involving situations with that member. I didn't say the politics would be the reason for that, I said it would be the personal attack or harassment. Masking the continuation of a personal views conflict outside of The Pit by satire in a story, subtle though it might seem, is not something that is allowed. And I will say this many times. Inclusion IS a political theme. People seem to have this misapprehension that politics solely revolves around governments, officials, and laws/policies. That is a misapprehension. Look up the word. Politics clearly includes the views and relations of groups within society. When the subject of inclusion is started and words constantly crop up like 'politically correct', and you begin to divide along two lines that have opposing views and conversations become contentious... that only makes this more obvious. Politics appears books, TV, movies, and now on GA. So it's going to be kept to The Pit where those who want to argue about their personal views can do so without wasting staff time.

I avoided using the word political with the word inclusion for a reason, assuming people would get that the FMT deemed the subject as such by moving it to the Pit, but I guess I will be explicit. Inclusion HAS been deemed a political subject. There are opposing views of politically correct vs. not politically correct on the subject, and there are definitely cultural, social, and political themes that constantly crop up when the conversations revolving around that word are initiated. That takes up moderation and administration time that is best spent elsewhere. It leads to moderation of members for political commentary outside The Pit that isn't necessary if people keep the conversation to the place best suited for it. So everyone is expressly clear, however, The Pit's description has been clarified as to what politics really means.

This is a misapprehension in a way. Overall, we do allow political themes, content, and characters in stories. However, please be aware that if an author posts content with political themes in such a way that baits other members based on previous site interactions, such as by mimicking conversations, POVs, involving direct conversational themes, that could be considered a personal attack and/or a site disruption which would be moderated. Using comments to create a conversation about specific current political events and people being mirrored in a story could also be moderated. Also, speaking to your original blog post, maybe consider how the comments regarding views toward the use of 'adverbs' and the use of 'inclusive themes' come across. How many comments are made about how adverbs should be represented fairly are posted here because gay authors under or overuse them or only use them in specific events because they have a limited POV or interest in using them due to "this or that" lack in their lives...? There was a comment about how most stories on this site would fail the Bechdel test vs. not failing it due to the sexual content of the story and 'that is indeed sad'. Sound non-judgmental? Nope. Conversations about inclusivity revolve around judgment. There seems to be no getting away from that. Judging from people who want everyone and everything to be included and feel as if that isn't happening among those who say no way, don't tell me what to write and judging from those who just want to write what they feel comfortable with and what feels integral to the story toward those they feel are trying to tell them how they should do that to fit in a mold. That doesn't mean it's true on either part, but it doesn't change the perception. Since some members can't seem to be able to phrase their desire to include themes without sounding judgmental and some members can't seem to stop from getting irate and responding in a way that then creates a disruption... the site staff has to step in. Clearly this has become a topic that on GA, as well as in real life, polarizes people. I'd rather write, or read, and just get on with all my site work without all the drama, thanks. So let's keep the conversations to The Pit where everyone who chooses to participate is aware of the potential controversy to follow.

On GA we like to allow members to discuss a variety of subjects relating to writing, reading, gay fiction, the LGBTQIA community, and more. There are many places on the site to post topics and information, depending on where the conversation fits best. In recent months, we have discovered that topics regarding 'inclusivity' regardless of the subject being sexuality, gender, culture, etc... continually veer into either a heated debate or political commentary or themes. Due to this creating a repeated need for moderation and removal or moving of topics, the forum moderation team has come to a decision to hopefully prevent any site disruptions. From today on, any further topics that will focus on themes of inclusivity such as posing questions to readers or authors, posting recent events relating to the subject including those in other forms of entertainment or local communities, sharing quizzes, articles, etc... MUST be posted in The Pit.

Myr must have put it in. I was on a journey of taxes tonight. No, authors can't put them in or change them. They should be 848x121 pixels.

It's a different banner. Is yours the right size?

I couldn’t change genders; I didn’t have the right clothing, and I needed to be able to trade and travel without drawing suspicion like a woman or Being alone would. So I thinned out my body, growing a handspan taller than my own height. I focused on my hair, making it a truly unfortunate shade of red, and covered my skin in blotches. My looks would make me stand out even more than being a stranger, but no one would connect me to the bills with my true face. My clothes were nondescript enou

You can create collections that are public or private, ordered or unordered, to track lists of stories you'd like to keep track of on the site (such as a 'Loved, would read again' or 'Not really my style') https://gayauthors.org/stories/browse/collections/

Did you catch this month's CSR featured story, Self-Portraits, by Richie Tennyson? Have you read the story? It's a quick read, for all that it is more than forty thousand words. Make sure you share your thoughts about the story or Richie's other stories. But first, as always, enjoy my interview with him! Are you a person who makes their bed in the morning, or do you not see much point? I do the most half-hearted feeble bed-making. I don’t see much point but I know I should at least try to be an adult. Have you ever gone out in public, realized your shirt is on backwards, and just don’t care? No, but recently I was out in public when I realised I was wearing a Harry Potter pyjama top. What’s something personal about you people might be surprised to know? I organise elaborate competitive Christmas Day treasure hunts for my family. The prizes are always terrible, such as framed pictures of my passport photo. When did you first decide to start writing? As soon as I could hold a pen. Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing? Sometimes it’s hard to gauge how much to “tell” the reader, versus whether the reader can make their own assumptions about certain things. Self-Portraits has some really… vibrant characters. Did you plot them all out before you write or did they come along organically as you started the story? The characters are mostly based on vibrant people in my own life, so they came onto the page organically. When you wrote the story, did you have the whole story idea from start to finish planned or did the characters take the story in any unexpected directions? The general storyline was planned from start to finish, but the Harriet character was totally unplanned. She just walked onto the page out of nowhere and took the story in a lot of unexpected directions. Self-Portraits really seems to have 2 similar-themed stories with different generations running simultaneously, influenced in different ways by their ages and experiences, with both the teens and the adults. Was this intentional? I hadn’t thought of it that way. Yes, both Richard and his mother go from being in a ‘couple’ to being ‘alone’ – and this plays out so differently, influenced by their ages and experiences. But the theme of powerful friendship/family love was intentional in both stories. What is your favorite scene in the story? The self-portrait itself. Is there anything you’d like to share about your current work or an upcoming story? I’m finishing a story called Happily Ever After, Ltd, which is about what happens when Prince Charming disappears from the pages of the Cinderella story. The fairytale company has to urgently find a temporary human replacement, but they don’t realise that the guy is gay. Don't forget to share your thoughts about the story!

Did you notice other sidebar widgets aren't there? And Myr made the changes. I'm more for the "Authors really do the best when they are proactive in achieving their own success" camp. I like cross-featuring multiple forms content on the site with the widgets and automatic features and notifications, but I like to think if you're proud of your work and want others to enjoy it, you make an effort to get it out there as well.

Or a link to all of them. Basically, the sidebar is one area where the site is helping promote authors and stories, members and blogs, clubs and topics, etc... to the community. As far as this topic being on topic, an author, representing other author(s) who then agreed, didn't like that their stories were being promoted for a shorter time frame due to the number of stories on the site that update frequently and how that impact their reads. The members want that lack of reads fixed (by putting the sidebar back to the same length as before). But, unfortunately, we as the site staff, have a reason to shorten the sidebar that is valid and necessary. So another member suggested alternate ways to improve readership that will require activity and interaction on the author's part instead of the site staff... and it's called off topic. Not really. It's two sides of the same coin. We help you, but you have to help yourself. I've said the exact same thing to many site authors when they joined and asked me for advice on how to be successful on GA. Authors cannot put their book on a shelf in a bookstore and expect readers to just find it. You cannot just put your story on this site and expect readers to find it either. Making use of the multiple features available to authors to help promote themselves is the way to gain readers and keep them. It takes work. Then, yes, you can get a little lazier about self-promotion... (sorry to all my readers, my life is crazy and admin, author, mom, educator roles often mean author slips to last). In the end, you have to decide what's important to you. Gaining more readers by making a little effort or being happy with what the site can do for you.

There are a VAST number of guest readers who search story content they want to read, find results off GA that lead them directly to a story on GA, come to the site directly to that story, and then read it. They could give a crap about the community, current authors, currently posting chapters, etc... In fact, if you think about it, that's probably how a lot of people who eventually do join and become community members found the site: a search (or someone else searched/found the site and shared). I will read old content I liked and saved/favorited (I have a whole bookmark folder that I prune when I get broken links all the time) from years past on other sites all the time as well because I've been reading online for 10+ years. So it makes perfect sense that stories that aren't current get reads, and there's nothing "ridiculous" about it. As Myr pointed out, by reducing the forums, when logged out and having 15 different sidebar options, it creates a far different page than members might see if you have a different view. I wasn't talking about the number of Stories updates. I see more forums as an admin than members do so my page looks different as well. Members have to realize we aren't all seeing the same page at the same time and, as staff with long experience trying to make the site as "current" to the usage our data shows us, we don't just make flippant changes. This is a completely different complaint, which we ask that members put in different topics because if you bury multiple complaints in one topic, it can go unnoticed and then we get hit with "well, you ignored our comments here!"... I will address it, though, since multiple people seem to have the same misconceptions about the Clubs area. 1) If you look just above the clubs on a computer, they can be sorted by all sorts of things. Default is latest ACTIVITY. That doesn't necessarily mean you are going to see and notice the immediate post or content or membership activity that is bumping it on the list. You can also change it to Most Members, Most Content, etc... You can also choose to filter the clubs to just the clubs YOU are part of. 2) If we force the filters and organize and bury clubs, then we are going to be making people click through to find the content they want just because YOU don't want it. Or to have people complain that we're censoring the clubs to what we think important. Or the clubs that are buried or filtered into a sub-forum would then be too hard to find and people would complain about that. So can you see why all the clubs are visible and we have filtering options available and expected for members to use instead of us having to micromanage your site experience? Unfortunately, I'll tell you what it feels like as a site staff member right now... You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

People often feel that any change will be detrimental at first but if they look at the hard data, that isn't always true. If it can be proven that Authors are experiencing a significant effect, we always can revisit site decisions. Show us the data. Show us what the chapter reads were before the change and what they shifted to after the change. The data needs to be from stories that have been actively posting so the only change has been that aspect of the forum change. Not posting content consistently, changing stories, changing genres, etc... can also affect readership.

What you see on the Forums page is not what Guests see. When logged out, you can see the smaller list of updates in the sidebar widgets actually coincides with the forums and club listing almost perfectly in length. It's pretty expected that members will use the follow option and notifications or Activity Streams. We do like to feature stories, but GA is a community, not just a reading repository.

Did you catch Monday's blog featuring @Andrew Q Gordon short story, Archangel? This is an older anthology feature from the theme "Walk on the Wild Side". What does that have to do with angels? Hmm.... Well, I picked this excerpt because it doesn't show that, but I really wanted to feature some of the smooth flow of Andrew's work and how well he could craft characters and stories that suck in readers from the beginning. He has many popular stories featuring characters who are evolving into themselves, either as adults or... something else. Which is it in this story? Want to read more? Click here

Walking over the mountain wasn’t the best idea with two foals—one wounded—but it was better than going backward toward the cave and trolls. I wanted to stay as far away from the road near where the cave had been as possible. Who knew if the beasts had other partners who would come for the kidnapped Beings? There had to have been a reason they’d taken so many. Humans caught Beings, especially young ones, in order to kill them in their attempts to purify the planet. They killed them. The

@northie and @wildone That would be me, of course! We wanted the blogs to all have creative blog cover images. I sourced the image from pixabay.

February is a month people tend to focus on that cute little angel with the diaper and wings, the bow and arrows... but Archangel is not about Cupid, oh no no no. What kind of angels? Well... Length: 10,683 Description: Everyone thinks Nick is the 'nicest guy they know.' But is he really as 'angelic' as they think? This submission is dedicated to Cia - who challenged me to write something for this Anthology. Hopefully it is worthy of she whom it is dedicated to. A Reader said: I loved the story. Especially the begining. It was fabulous. And then there was the twist. Like Trevor, it kinda threw me off, but I liked the ending. Perfect piece of work. Thanks for finding time to write, even when you were "pushed" into it. ~ Michael9344 If you want to spread the word about Andrew's story, download the graphic below and add it to your signature! Make sure you come back on Wednesday to see the excerpt I chose to share!

@Albert1434 and @Marty and @Headstall Yes, the topics and posts work exactly the same way in Clubs as they do in the forums. The reason for the move is that we are trying to condense the forums to the ones that are being used and remove a lot of the 'dead space'. Forums are growing outdated, Clubs are more 'wave of the future'. Being able to drive traffic to clubs hosted by promoted authors who are active or those active chat forums that we can also combine into the Clubs, which are intended to be a 'social area' of the site, is a bonus. A benefit for authors is that gives promoted authors more freedom to 'customize' their club area (You're very welcome on the graphics, Gary!) to create different spaces for different subjects/topics as well as allow members to use some of the Club features that the forum software maker has been integrating for their club membership organization and notifications.

Thank you so much, Jeffrey, for re-reading and liking/commenting on the story. I am so glad you enjoyed it again. I try hard editing aloud with dialogue, and I'm always listening to conversations around me so I can make it flow as naturally as possible. (That might make me a little creepy, so thankfully I can write notes on my phone nowadays with no one the wiser, lol).

No... no mercy. Muahahahahaha!

And that's a great compliment! I have that issue sometimes, but usually it's more about "I know I should have been asleep 30 minutes... 45... an hour ago! Whoops!" 😆